Dependable access to the resources necessary to sustain life and foster prosperity eludes vast portions of humanity. Even in well developed areas of the world, natural disasters have demonstrated such access can be erased in little time at all. In some instances, e.g. military operations, the ability to easily create this access is extremely important.
According to the Canadian International Development Agency, about 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. The UN reports that a full 1.6 billion people lack electricity. Again, according to the UN, nearly one billion people lack access to the most basic of health services and about 3 times that number live on less than two dollars per day. Reports attribute tens of millions of deaths each year to entirely preventable water related diseases alone. Sadly, many of these deaths are children. Illness caused by water related disease affects even more and often leads to missed schooling and work. By improving dependable access to life sustaining and prosperity fostering resources the well being of billions of people throughout the world could be improved. Moreover, these people would be enabled to contribute trillions of dollars to the global economy every year.
Many means of providing such access are well known, however, these means are significantly obstructed in situations where infrastructure is either minimal or has been destroyed. Some solutions to these problems require large numbers of consumables such as filters and chemicals which can be costly and are hard to import into an isolated location. Some require highly skilled operators or constant maintenance by a trained technician. Others only address, for example, the water quality or medical aspect of the problem. Additionally, known solutions do not offer the dependent population a way to foster economic activity. Known solutions are also not easily adaptable to the differing needs of different areas, populations, or situations. Another issue with existing solutions is that they rely on donated funding and are therefore limited. Many solutions provide free services which in effect may actually stifle economic growth because a local entrepreneur who desires to offer such services will not be able to compete with the free nature of the services.
The ability to provide these necessary resources from a single locus without the need for large quantities of consumables or skilled staff while at the same time providing a hub for economic activity is, accordingly, acutely desirable. Additionally desirable is the ability to easily tailor such a locus to the needs of any given area, population, or scenario. Ideally such a solution should be self sustainable and economically profitable at the local, regional, and global level.